The old man

[iggy123]

An excerpt from my first ever short story:

The old man opened the door gently and stepped in and took account of his hotel room, or what he could see of it in the moonlight penetrating the small square window. Out there the faint sounds of late night revelers and the life of the swamps and forests that surround them. His nose gave a sniff to the air. He placed his things by the bed and sat down on the edge and rifled through his bittle for a small tin box. He unwrapped it from the stained rag and peeled away the blanket and placed it on the white sheet. He stood. He closed his eyes. He whispered something unintelligible, moving his lips swiftly, and produced sounds that may have been a foreign language and made a movement with his hands like a maestro, as if the bed in front of him were an unruly orchestra. He kept them hushed for a minute. He opened his eyes and took away the lid to reveal a small black mass. Parts of it began to venture out and separate on the bed and soon insects and things such as flees and ladybugs and cockroaches spread across the sheets and took their places among the folds and creases. The old man lay among them, one big ragged mass among many smaller specks.

The hotel was filled with many young couples and the night air vibrated with the sounds of love but the old man's mind did not swim in it. He was a dirty old man but not a dirty old man. His dreams were precious. They projected upon the white of the pillow above his head in the ghostly moonlight that is really an illuminating shadow. The shape of a young boy following a circus Elephant across a bridge. He grabbed at the animal's tale but it only walked on and looked unwaveringly through long-lashed eyes. Benevolent eyes. In a divine forest a cloaked spirit wandering. Its purpose unseeable in the black black whirlpooling of its heart. The Earth spinning too fast for the trolls who work the forest outskirts, too fast for the philosophers who stab their hooks in it, outpacing the ambitions of all those who toil on its surface to their own ends. Who are all deemed equal and unworthy and take solace in their mediocrity.


The link to the ebook: The Old Man


A link to my blog: Iggles The Clown


Thanks!